Monday 24 January 2011

Most Businesses Can Use online reputation management

When companies or persons fall prey to unfair competitors, irate ex-employees or disgruntled people, then a SERM gets to be crucial during the financial survival of the small business.

Firms like SERMs are important in maintaining, and in some cases salvaging and restoring organizations or person's reputation and good identify.

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Businesses are also appreciating the collateral advantage of having a Reputation Management agency on-board as an integral a part of their enterprise design, its outstanding promoting! Though securing a company's very good reputation and name on the web, it generates wonderful press and good exposure that in the end adds greatly to the bottom line of a company's stability sheet, producing the services to virtually pay for by itself in lots of conditions.

This tends to be an exceptionally strong offering point for organisations at the same time as persons, to know that they are cleansing and protecting their reputations and cyber photographs, even though concurrently operating a really successful advertising initiative. At times vendors completely disregard their former marketing efforts web based and go for the advantages of Web based Status Management.

Having a SERM agency on your aspect is with out a doubt the way to go in this cyber age. For additional information on online reputation management and corporate reputation management, Please visit us at http://removeripoffreports.net/

Making Money in Wotlk

[blogsearch]
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A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

Aaron Sorkin's Cable News Network Project Awaits Greenlight At HBO ...

For the past few months, HBO has been talking to Aaron Sorkin about his long-gestating drama set behind the scenes at a nightly cable news show. However, with him busy on the awards circuit with his latest film, The Social Network, ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

(KRQE NEWS 13) - As of 7:10 a.m. - President Barack Obama is putting the finishing touches on a State of the Union speech Tuesday that'll mostly be about one thing -- jobs. Comments. Latest Headlines. News Happening Now � Sunday News ...

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bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

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bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

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Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

Aaron Sorkin's Cable News Network Project Awaits Greenlight At HBO ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

Aaron Sorkin's Cable News Network Project Awaits Greenlight At HBO ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

Aaron Sorkin's Cable News Network Project Awaits Greenlight At HBO ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

Aaron Sorkin's Cable News Network Project Awaits Greenlight At HBO ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

Aaron Sorkin's Cable News Network Project Awaits Greenlight At HBO ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

Aaron Sorkin's Cable News Network Project Awaits Greenlight At HBO ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

Aaron Sorkin's Cable News Network Project Awaits Greenlight At HBO ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

Aaron Sorkin's Cable News Network Project Awaits Greenlight At HBO ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

Aaron Sorkin's Cable News Network Project Awaits Greenlight At HBO ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

Aaron Sorkin's Cable News Network Project Awaits Greenlight At HBO ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

A tetralogy of science news

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Aaron Sorkin's Cable News Network Project Awaits Greenlight At HBO ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

Tuesday 18 January 2011

Start Making Money

I realize we are not supposed to use “angry” rhetoric these days, but columns like this one in USA Today by Jody Bottum demand an answer.

The title is, “Where are adults in debt ceiling talks?” If there is justice in the world, the only correct answer is, “Getting punched in the face, though metaphorically speaking.”

We can forgive a contributing editor of the Weekly Standard for taking to USA Today to take shots — also metaphorical — at Jim DeMint. After all, the magazine that gave us the ideological underpinnings of the “big government conservative” cannot be expected to really be too dedicated to . . . um . . . smaller government.

But to juxtapose Jim DeMint as a child and Tim Geithner as an adult is a bit much — let alone Geithner as the conservative and DeMint as the radical.

Jim DeMint says it’s not his fault. The GOP senator from South Carolina points out that he didn’t help spend all the nation’s money. Neither did the new congressional Republicans. So why, he asked in a recent interview, should they extend the national debt ceiling to pay for that spending?

. . . .

[I]t’s curious that Geithner sounds like a conservative in all this, while DeMint sounds like a radical.

Here is the problem, which no one wants to discuss. If we are going to keep raising the debt ceiling, why have it at all? We’ve set ourselves up for an elaborate and cynical kabuki dance with a pre-ordained outcome and, ultimately, no incentive to cut spending.

In fact, it is the adults in the room — the ones who supposedly aren’t speaking enough — who have created the problem. I don’t want those people to speak. I want them to shut the heck up.

They’ve driven up debt. They’ve driven up spending. They’d drive up taxes if we let them. And they know, they absolutely know, that they can do it with impunity because high minded pundits will take to the pages of USA Today and call them adult, back them up, and insist on more debt so we can have more spending. Of course most will fail to mention the “more spending” problem.

The arguments we are having now — the sky is falling, the world is ending, we are going to default, the markets will crash, everyone will hate us — are the exact same arguments pushed by the exact same people who advocated TARP.

Many politicians lost their political lives — again, metaphorically speaking — for supporting TARP. The same should happen here.

As Jody Bottum himself notes, the world will not end, the sky will not fall, and the Treasury Secretary can keep paying out money.

Friends, we take in more money each month than we must pay out in interest on the national debt. The only way we will default on our loans if the debt ceiling is not raised is if Barack Obama lets us default.

We should resist all efforts to raise the debt ceiling and should instead start living within our means. Otherwise, let’s scrap the debt ceiling and stop doing the stupid kabuki dance while lighting candles and sacrificing red herrings in the name of some mythical, responsible adults participating in a conversation we wouldn’t even be having if these adults hadn’t been destroying the economic future of this country in the first place.

Maybe heaven is not the only thing requiring the faith of a child.

By the way, it is time we consider making the “Adult Establishment” in Washington as morally objectionable as “adult establishments” already are.

10 Ways to Market Your Awesome Start-Up

For aspiring entrepreneurs, taking a concept from inception to launch can happen faster an cheaper than ever before. You just launched a shiny new site, and your product has been thoroughly tested and debugged — and now you’re in the hot seat (either from investors, co-workers, or yourself) to ramp up your almost non-existent marketing efforts.

Here are 10 relatively lightweight efforts (in no particular order) that just might get you on the cover of your favorite magazine before you know it:

10. Network / Hustle / Get After It: Sure, social tools have facilitated your digital hustle, but there’s no substitute for making great connections in person. Leverage your network to get bloggers, writers, creatives, and fellow entrepreneurs to write about you, think about your work, or at least like you enough to help you out down the road.

9. Add yourself to CrunchBase, which is an publicly editable Wikipedia of tech companies, people and investors.

8. Add yourself to YouNoodle, which is a place to meet other likeminded individuals.

7. Apply and participate in University or city/org sponsored business plan competitions. Keep in mind what the real value is here, it’s not necessarily the 10 or 20k prize money… but the random collection of angel investors, press, and talented technologists/creatives that hang around these events (even on other teams).

6. Add yourself to StartupWeekend’s Startup Database

5. Get to know your local StartupDigest leaders/editors

4. Get to know any local startup aggregators, like Proudly Made In DC or We Are NY Tech

3. Sponsor and attend events like Tech Cocktail or your local BarCamp

2. Apply for incubator/accelerator programs… see #7 for a similar value proposition.

1. Be excellent and build awesome stuff that people talk about.

Are we missing something? Undoubtedly so… let us know below!

Source:http://removeripoffreports.net/

Arnold Schwarzenegger set to make Hollywood comeback as a nice ...

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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » Mammoths news ...

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Darth Vader's other son from another mother [via GeekTyrant]-- A simple post on the official Tumblr for Rian Johnson's time travel movie 'Looper'

Friday 14 January 2011

People Making Money Net

Hullabaloo

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

"Philanthrocapitalism" and the Lucky Duckies

by digby

If you read nothing else today, be sure to read Cynthia Freeland's piece in the Atlantic about the new super-rich. She discusses what may be the most important aspect of the plutonomy --- the fact that it's unmoored from national allegiance. This is an important insight and gets to what I think is really the big transformation of our time: the unraveling of the nation state. You see it in these international institutions like the IMF and in huge multi-national corporations, of course. But I hadn't realized until I read this just how much the super-rich had adopted a transnational identity.

I'm not entirely sure that it's a bad thing in the long run --- there's nothing that says the nation state is the only possible human organizing principle. It's actually fairly new in historical terms. Something different could feasibly end up being better. But at the moment the only people who are currently benefiting from this new arrangement are the very wealthy and powerful. And there is a very good chance that this will not go well for regular folks in the long run either.

In the meantime, here's what we are dealing with:
If you are looking for the date when America’s plutocracy had its coming-out party, you could do worse than choose June 21, 2007. On that day, the private-equity behemoth Blackstone priced the largest initial public offering in the United States since 2002, raising $4 billion and creating a publicly held company worth $31 billion at the time. Stephen Schwarzman, one of the firm’s two co-founders, came away with a personal stake worth almost $8 billion, along with $677 million in cash; the other, Peter Peterson, cashed a check for $1.88 billion and retired.
In the sort of coincidence that delights historians, conspiracy theorists, and book publishers, June 21 also happened to be the day Peterson threw a party—at Manhattan’s Four Seasons restaurant, of course—to launch The Manny, the debut novel of his daughter, Holly, who lightly satirizes the lives and loves of financiers and their wives on the Upper East Side. The best seller fits neatly into the genre of modern “mommy lit”—USA Today advised readers to take it to the beach—but the author told me that she was inspired to write it in part by her belief that “people have no clue about how much money there is in this town.”

Holly Peterson and I spoke several times about how the super-affluence of recent years has changed the meaning of wealth. “There’s so much money on the Upper East Side right now,” she said. “If you look at the original movie Wall Street, it was a phenomenon where there were men in their 30s and 40s making $2 and $3 million a year, and that was disgusting. But then you had the Internet age, and then globalization, and you had people in their 30s, through hedge funds and Goldman Sachs partner jobs, who were making $20, $30, $40 million a year. And there were a lot of them doing it. I think people making $5 million to $10 million definitely don’t think they are making enough money.”

As an example, she described a conversation with a couple at a Manhattan dinner party: “They started saying, ‘If you’re going to buy all this stuff, life starts getting really expensive. If you’re going to do the NetJet thing’”—this is a service offering “fractional aircraft ownership” for those who do not wish to buy outright—“‘and if you’re going to have four houses, and you’re going to run the four houses, it’s like you start spending some money.’”

The clincher, Peterson says, came from the wife: “She turns to me and she goes, ‘You know, the thing about 20’”—by this, she meant $20 million a year—“‘is 20 is only 10 after taxes.’ And everyone at the table is nodding.”

That's nice. One wonders whether Holly will be "satirizing" the lives of the millions of elderly Americans her father seeks to impoverish with his crusade to destroy social security. A crusade which Freeland inexplicably seems to think is a form of "philanthropy"!

While we may all have our own opinions on whether News Corp’s iPad-bound newspaper, The Daily, is a boondoggle or simply before its time, I think we were all at least looking forward to seeing what it was like. People were curious about Virgin’s Project (though I haven’t heard a word about it since), and naturally want to know what it is that Rupert Murdoch has spent so much money on. We heard a few days back that it would be making its debut on the 19th (with Steve Jobs rumored to be in attendance), but it seems that wasn’t in the cards.

All Things D has learned (from a slip-up at an internal News Corp meeting, no doubt) that The Daily will not, in fact, be launching next week, but has been put off to an unspecified date, probably some time in February. And they blame Apple! The nerve.

Supposedly, The Daily was supposed to take advantage of a new feature in the Apple economy that would push new content automatically to your device or devices. Basically a pay subscription service, like a regular newspaper. But the word is that Apple’s not ready to go live, and they’ve caused News Corp to delay the launch until such a time as the feature is actually complete. Considering that can’t possibly take too long, the source of this information has shared that the delay is on the order of weeks, not months. Or at least, that’s when they’ll announce the next delay.

Paul thinks this thing is going to go down in flames. I’m not so sure, but I do know that the kind of person who buys an iPad is far more likely to be taking advantage of all the free content on the net. They don’t get up in the morning and pick up the Times from their doorstep. They pull their iPad off the nightstand and check their feeds.

That said, if they can even get 5% of the 8-million-strong iPad membership to pay $5 a month, that’s a triumph. It will depend on their opening move, however. If they’re smart, they’ll give it away for a good long time — 90 days, perhaps. If they can run on fumes for that time and then fill the tank when people find they actually like this little app, then they’re fine. But if they try to charge for admission up front, they’ll be high and dry.

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Thursday 13 January 2011

manage personal finances

The theory is simple: "If you don't have the money, don't charge it. Try to leave your credit card at home and only use it to pay bills," advises April Lewis, director of education for Consolidated Credit Counseling Services. Then immediately pay off your credit-card balance. As for old credit-card debt, sit down and commit to paper a plan for paying them off. Go for a quick hit, like paying off the smallest balance first, or decide to take on the highest rate card first. Get the job done.

Here's a second tip: Be proactive about managing your credit. Call up your lender and ask it to lower your interest rate. Usually, lenders will lower callers' rates by 2% to 3%, says Scott Gamm, founder of HelpSaveMyDollars.com. Also check your credit report. You can check your credit for free at annualcreditreport.com, for example. If you see mistakes, contact the credit agencies and get those mistakes corrected. If errors are dragging down your score, eliminating them can boost it to where it belongs and make you eligible for better rates.

2. Think automation

Free online banking tools can make it easier to manage your finances with less work. To help grow your savings, for example, you can schedule regular transfers from your checking account. Manisha Thakor, author of Get Financially Naked: How to Talk Money With Your Honey, suggests setting up the transfer of a set amount of money into your savings account every pay day.

Also automate recurring bill payments so you never miss a due date or pay a late fee, which sends money down the drain. Even without late fees, timely payments are key: 35% of your credit score is based on your ability to make payments on time. If you sign up for automatic payments, however, make sure to check your monthly bills for errors. One other caveat: "Make sure you have enough cushion in your checking account to avoid any overdrafts" before setting up auto-payments, money coach Lora Sasiela says.

LaunchBox Digital, a VC firm specializing in angel, seed, and early stage investments, just wrapped up its third annual 12-week startup mentoring program. Similar to Y Combinator and TechStars, LaunchBox invests seed capital of $20,000 into startup teams and provides them with 12 weeks of education, mentorship, and access to advisers. The following 7 LaunchBox10 companies are graduating from this year’s program and will be going live as part of LaunchBox Demo Day, where the companies will present their businesses to potential investors and strategic partners.

Without further ado, here are the graduates:

CityPockets (Crunchbase profile): Today, we live in the world of the Groupon clone, and thanks to the Google-shunning colossus, “daily deal” websites now litter the Web. These sites have been a big hit among mom and pop shops and small businesses because they can be such an effective way to attract new, local customers. The problem for these merchants, however, has been converting new customers into loyal, repeat visitors. According to LaunchBox, less than 15% of “deal jumpers” return to the same merchant again without another deal offer. On the whole, these merchants struggle to retain the influx of new customers, failing to take the steps to establish that critical, lasting relationship with the consumer.

CityPockets.com is a real-time, self-serve merchant CRM platform that aims to address customer retention issues by allowing merchants to more easily capture user contact info and to offer repeat discounts. In addition, the platform empowers merchants to manage gaps in supply and demand by sending out time-sensitive, limited-quantity offers whenever it makes sense for their businesses. Customers opt-in to follow their favorite merchants via CityPockets’ web and mobile apps.

Businesses interested in being part of the CityPockets Merchant Network can sign up here, and Daily Deal users can sign up at CityPockets.com to access and keep track of all voucher purchases from across popular Daily Deal sites on a single platform, and eventually receive more offers from relevant merchants of their choice.

FiscalPie (Crunchbase profile): FiscalPie breaks down the barrier between personal finance and social networks by providing users with Facebook applications that enable users to compare their finances with others and, in turn, learn how to make more educated financial decisions. One such FiscalPie application, “Retire Where?” shows you which cities you’ll be able to afford in retirement and allows you to compare your it with the future location of your friends.

FiscalPie works to make the myriad sources of financial information on the Web more reflective of your own specific circumstances—while keeping your information private —by creating an anonymous network of people that share similar financial profiles. Until the individual truly becomes part of the conversation, financial information has little significance. FiscalPie is hoping to start that dialog—socially.

HEALTHeME (Crunchbase profile): HEALTHeME delivers treatments that empower those struggling with weight, stress, and mood issues to better manage their health via the web and their mobile phone. The HEALTHeME platform combines clinical treatments and artificial intelligence to create customized behavior modification plans based on users’ lifestyles, health goals, and personality type. HEALTHeME then leverages real-time coaching, social networks and user’s healthcare providers to offer a truly personalized user experience. Would love to see an app for this, too.

Keona Health (Crunchbase profile): Keona Health is a company that optimizes admissions for primary care providers, increasing both productivity and cost savings. Keona’s Patient Decision Support system empowers patients with instant, personalized advice that aims to resolve up to 10% of patient cases at home. Triage nurses review each case, but with the goal of being 5 times faster and with more comprehensive safety checks than before. As a result of the greater emphasis on in-home consultation, when patients need to travel into the office to see a doctor, they should find reduced delays and wait times.

Keona has partnered with UNC and Duke to develop a decision engine that has already analyzed over 1,000 real medical records, and UNC Campus Health Services is acting as Keona’s first beta customer. During 2011, Keona Health plans to expand to several additional universities.

Leaguescape (Crunchbase profile): Leaguescape is a new platform for fantasy sports that combines social gaming and betting and allows you to collect all your fantasy sports leagues in one place. Like the Pokerstars or Full Tilt Poker of fantasy sports, Leaguescape allows fantasy sports enthusiasts to manage and bet on their season leagues and get their daily fix of fantasy sports with a variety of game offerings that enable users to draft, watch, and win on a daily basis.

Drawing on the online poker model, Leaguescape provides all things a fantasy sports bettor could need, including a variety of gaming types, rewards, and promotions.

Slipstream (Crunchbase profile): The likelihood is that your Twitter stream is an unfavorable mix of a few things you care about and a lot you don’t. You don’t want to miss out on important news and events, but you don’t have time to read everything. Slipstream wants to rid your stream of irrelevant Tweets.

Today, Slipstream launched its third prototype, a Chrome extension that lets you hide tweets on Twitter.com. It works seamlessly to help you get rid of things like Foursquare checkins, paper.li mentions, or when people you’re following start live-tweeting events. Gonezo. Simply click the “Hide” link that Slipstream adds to the end of every tweet and begin filtering your stream. It’s that easy.

Spring Metrics (Crunchbase profile): Spring Metrics helps you grow your online business by providing a deeper understanding of your customers and how they interact with your website. Spring Metrics seeks to make complex web analytics more friendly and digestible for marketers and e-commerce professionals who don’t want to wrestle with the complexity of traditional analytics products.

With an easy-to-use interface that requires no coding knowledge, Spring Metrics eliminates the hassle of creating conversion funnels and goals. The company’s real-time dashboard offers an array of conversion-oriented metrics, and the “Insight Engine” unearths actionable patterns in the data—patterns aimed at helping turn more visitors into paying customers.

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Verizon and Apple Q&A (video) - CNET News

At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Perhaps the label should be something like “Percentage of respondents.” (The folks who collected the data allowed respondents to cite two “main” sources of news, which confused me.) I'll make the change. Thanks! ...

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

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Verizon and Apple Q&A (video) - CNET News

At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

Verizon and Apple Q&A (video) - CNET News

At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

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Verizon and Apple Q&A (video) - CNET News

At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

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Verizon and Apple Q&A (video) - CNET News

At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Verizon and Apple Q&A (video) - CNET News

At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Verizon and Apple Q&A (video) - CNET News

At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Verizon and Apple Q&A (video) - CNET News

At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Verizon and Apple Q&A (video) - CNET News

At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Verizon and Apple Q&A (video) - CNET News

At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Verizon and Apple Q&A (video) - CNET News

At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Verizon and Apple Q&A (video) - CNET News

At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Verizon and Apple Q&A (video) - CNET News

At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

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At the iPhone 4 Verizon unveiling, Dan Mead, President of Verizon Wireless, and Tim Cook, COO of Apple, answer questions from the press.

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

Monday 10 January 2011

Making Money Opportunities

The last few days have been a blaze of reports about the future of Android and the sub $100 smartphone in 2011. I've been sucked into pieces from Fred, Fortune, Horace, and even some random dude (with good points to make) just as much as the next guy which is why it behooves me to say this now:

If you live in the world of startups (as an entrepreneur, rockstar hacker, seed investor, VC, or even cheerleader) none of this inside baseball stuff about who is going to take market share in the smartphone wars matters to you.

There, I've said it. If you are like me and don't actually follow sports, this whole market share thing is a great substitute.

It's also a big deal for the big tech companies. For instance, at HP we were highly motivated to have Android commoditize smartphones (at least until they went and bought Palm). Google also suffers tremendously if search doesn't port well to this new platform. And clearly Apple (which has already sold Macs to every sucker willing to pay the premium) loves the idea of selling more CPUs to the folks in the cult (me included).

But if you are building the next big SaaS startup? The next social commerce killer app? The next Internet infrastructure bit? You should absolutely not give a shit at all.

In fact, let me tell you what the recipe for determining what your "smartphone strategy" should be:

1. Think hard about whether you can ship an HTML5 version that your customers can find, use, and be delighted by. If so, do that and skip the rest.
2. If the answer to #1 is no, build an iOS app.
3. After you get to a million downloads (yes, 10^6) think about writing a version for Android. But only after you GOTO #1 and re-evaluate that issue.

Before you stop reading, consider this: I have three Android phones. I worked on several Android projects at HP. I love Android, but I love it as a political statement only because Apple's controlling stance on everything creeps me out.

If you want users with credit cards that spend money, mainstream reach, or a platform that actually might make an interesting case for abandoning open standards ("write once, run almost anywhere"), then iOS is it-- for everything else, just be happy the mobile web is now a legit platform to deploy to.

I meet with so many entrepreneurs who run startups and say something like "yeah, we love Android" and then go on to give me a demo on iOS. Why? Because this is where the users are. Not because it is more polished (it is), or because it has a higher quality filter in the AppStore's approval process (it does), but because when you are running a startup, you've got limited resources — and navel gazing about whether the $85 smartphone is going to cause Android to "explode" doesn't help to get you closer to winning, nor does betting precious development resources on political causes (backing the more "open" guy).

But wait, doesn't the openness engender more startup opportunities? Try as I might, I've only found four types of Android specific startup opportunities, none of which have made me particularly excited about investing:

1. Alternatives to key OS functionality (think Swype for the keyboard or Fring for the dialer). Because apps on Android can replace key OS-provided functionality, there are companies trying to invent a better keyboard, a better telephony app, etc. I love Swype (it is super cool), but as a business you only need to look back 15 years at all of the folks who thought they could replace subpar Microsoft-provided functionality for Windows.

2. Enterprise-proofing Android. I think there might be a couple of companies who will build interesting acquisition targets here (especially in the crumbling of the RIM empire) but there is high risk that someone on the actual Android team may wake up soon to the fact that CIOs everywhere (who buy "in bulk") want smartphones made enterprise-safe and thus significantly shorten the runway for all of these startups.

3. Making Android a much better platform for other sensor input. Blood glucose monitors. Bluetooth video cameras. Traffic analyzers. All of these seem to me to be cases for Android's more general form multi-tasking which is quite a bit better than the mongrel Apple shipped, but in the fullness of time, I suspect the folks in Cupertino will catch on to this (or at least the batteries should catch up).

4. Customizing Android for dumb "box maker" OEMs. This is an interesting small business opportunity, but if you want to know what the limited upside is here, just go and find one of the Canonical guys who've been dealing with HP and Dell for years.

Other than that, Android is only better for startups for one Really Big Reason: it puts more HTML5 capable browsers in the pockets of regular users. But guess what? No matter who wins (iOS, Android or even Rim/Nokia), these very capable browsers are now jacks-to-enter in the realm of smartphones.

Smartphones are great for startups, full stop. But Android versus iOS? Sort of like wondering whether the early customers to Amazon.com in 1996 were coming from Windows or Mac. Either way, the big deal was access not whose vehicle you came in.

Ok Go Explains There Are Lots Of Ways To Make Money If You Can Get Fans

from the everything's-possible dept

Over the last few years, we've covered many of the moves by the band Ok Go -- to build up a fanbase often with the help of amazingly viral videos, ditch their major record label (EMI), and explore new business model opportunities. In the last few days, two different members of Ok Go explained a bit more of the band's thinking in two separate places, and both are worth reading. First up, we have Tim Nordwind, who did an interview with Hypebot, where he explained the band's general view on file sharing:

Obviously we'd love for anyone who has our music to buy a copy. But again, we're realistic enough to know that most music can be found online for free. And trying to block people's access to it isn't good for bands or music. If music is going to be free, then musicians will simply have to find alternative methods to make a living in the music business. People are spending money on music, but it's on the technology to play it. They spend hundreds of dollars on Ipods, but then fill it with 80 gigs of free music. That's ok, but it's just a different world now, and bands must learn to adjust.

Elsewhere in the interview, he talks about the importance of making fans happy and how the band realizes that there are lots of different ways to make money, rather than just selling music directly:

Our videos have opened up many more opportunities for us to make the things we want to make, and to chase our best and wildest ideas. Yes, we need to figure out how to make a living in a world where people don't buy music anymore. But really, we've been doing that for the last ten years. Things like licensing, touring, merch, and also now making videos through corporate sponsorship have all allowed us to keep the lights on and continue making music.

Separately, last Friday, Damian Kulash wrote a nice writeup in the Wall Street Journal all about how bands can, should and will make money going forward. In many ways the piece reminds me a bit of my future of music business models post from earlier this year -- and Kulash even uses many of the same examples in his article (Corey Smith, Amanda Palmer, Josh Freese, etc.). It's a really worthwhile read as well. He starts by pointing out that for a little over half a century, the record labels had the world convinced that the "music" industry really was just the "recorded music" industry:

For a decade, analysts have been hyperventilating about the demise of the music industry. But music isn't going away. We're just moving out of the brief period--a flash in history's pan--when an artist could expect to make a living selling records alone. Music is as old as humanity itself, and just as difficult to define. It's an ephemeral, temporal and subjective experience.

For several decades, though, from about World War II until sometime in the last 10 years, the recording industry managed to successfully and profitably pin it down to a stable, if circular, definition: Music was recordings of music. Records not only made it possible for musicians to connect with listeners anywhere, at any time, but offered a discrete package for commoditization. It was the perfect bottling of lightning: A powerful experience could be packaged in plastic and then bought and sold like any other commercial product.

But, he notes, that time is now gone, thanks in large part to the internet. But that doesn't mean the music business is in trouble. Just the business of selling recorded music. But there's lots of things musicians can sell. He highlights Corey Smith and Smith's ability to make millions by giving away his music for free, and then touring. But he also points out that touring isn't for everyone. He covers how corporate licensing has become a bigger and bigger opportunity for bands that are getting popular. While he doesn't highlight the specific economics of it, what he's really talking about is that if your band is big, you can sell your fan's attention -- which is something Ok Go has done successfully by getting corporate sponsorship of their videos. As he notes, the sponsors provide more money than the record labels with many fewer strings:

These days, money coming from a record label often comes with more embedded creative restrictions than the marketing dollars of other industries. A record label typically measures success in number of records sold. Outside sponsors, by contrast, tend to take a broader view of success. The measuring stick could be mentions in the press, traffic to a website, email addresses collected or views of online videos. Artists have meaningful, direct, and emotional access to our fans, and at a time when capturing the public's attention is increasingly difficult for the army of competing marketers, that access is a big asset.

...

Now when we need funding for a large project, we look for a sponsor. A couple weeks ago, my band held an eight-mile musical street parade through Los Angeles, courtesy of Range Rover. They brought no cars, signage or branding; they just asked that we credit them in the documentation of it. A few weeks earlier, we released a music video made in partnership with Samsung, and in February, one was underwritten by State Farm.

We had complete creative control in the productions. At the end of each clip we thanked the company involved, and genuinely, because we truly are thankful. We got the money we needed to make what we want, our fans enjoyed our videos for free, and our corporate Medicis got what their marketing departments were after: millions of eyes and goodwill from our fans. While most bands struggle to wrestle modest video budgets from labels that see videos as loss leaders, ours wind up making us a profit.

Of course, that only works if you have a big enough fanbase, but that doesn't mean there aren't things that less well known bands can use to make money as well. He talks about an up-and-coming band in LA that doesn't even have a manager that was able make money:

The unsigned and unmanaged Los Angeles band Killola toured last summer and offered deluxe USB packages that included full albums, live recordings and access to two future private online concerts for $40 per piece. Killola grossed $18,000 and wound up in the black for their tour. Mr. Donnelly says, "I can't imagine they'll be ordering their yacht anytime soon, but traditionally bands at that point in their careers aren't even breaking even on tour."

The point, Kulash, notes, is that there's a lot of things a band can sell, focusing on "selling themselves." And, the thing he doesn't mention is that, when you're focusing on selling the overall experience that is "you" as a musician or a band, it's something that can't be freely copied. People can copy the music all they want, but they can't copy you. "You" are a scarce good that can't be "pirated." That's exactly what more and more musicians are figuring out these days, and it's helping to make many more artists profitable. And, no, it doesn't mean that any artist can make money. But it certainly looks like any artist that understands this can do a hell of a lot better than they would have otherwise, if they just relied on the old way of making money in the music business.

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